Mega-Ultra-Super-Duper-Uber Challenge Topic

I wont be participating next season because of how the scheduling was put together. Frankly, when you have an interconference tournament where we use up 1 or 2 of our non conference games its ok to have all the 1 seeds play each other. When however it is half your schedule more thought needs to be put into scheduling these games. The unintended consequence is that some coaches are going to have their post seasons put at risk or have their seeding majorly impacted. All the teams participating already play a brutal conference schedule, now you are putting the top teams up against one another (which would be ok I suppose if everything was equal, but its not as it doesnt take into account roster makeup etc.) you can literally have a team go 0-5 because they were seeded as a 1 but lost 5 Srs. It shouldnt be that 1s only play 1s...1st should play each other 2s 3s and even 4s...mix it up. Anyhow several coaches have expressed the same concern. Hope that input helps.

I have the same reservations. Had I understood how the seeding was going to work, I doubt I'd have signed on. The team in the example above is Bowie State, essentially.

I would consider continuing if we change the seeding. Here's another problematic example: St. Augustine's. They just won the NT and they're not involved this season! Why? Well, because they just missed the cut based on the seasons when they had a bunch of freshmen and sophomores. Not to worry, though, they'll make the cut next time... and will be a 1 or 2 seed with a bunch of freshmen and sophomores.

if you are a 1 seed with a younger team, wouldn't the other 1s have potentially the same concern? I'm not sure that you want to be so concerned about your own seeding or NT prospects that you want to duck a tough schedule. The challenge commish does a great job, let's not make it any harder than it is.

if you are a 1 seed with a younger team, wouldn't the other 1s have potentially the same concern?

Potentially, sure.

I'm not sure that you want to be so concerned about your own seeding or NT prospects that you want to duck a tough schedule.

Hell yes, my NT prospects are more important to me than having a specific type of tough schedule for a specific set of 5 games... and if I wanted to duck a tough schedule I should probably have changed conferences already.

The challenge commish does a great job, let's not make it any harder than it is.

The challenge commish did a great job getting everyone involved and coordinating. I was on the fence to start with due to the number of games involved. The irrational seeding system makes it let appealing to me than it originally was.

I'm with victorzhao on this one. How about we let the process play out for a couple of seasons and make suggestions about changes THEN, once we've had the chance to see the cracks, if any, in the system.

if you are a 1 seed with a younger team, wouldn't the other 1s have potentially the same concern?

Potentially, sure.

I'm not sure that you want to be so concerned about your own seeding or NT prospects that you want to duck a tough schedule.

Hell yes, my NT prospects are more important to me than having a specific type of tough schedule for a specific set of 5 games... and if I wanted to duck a tough schedule I should probably have changed conferences already.

The challenge commish does a great job, let's not make it any harder than it is.

The challenge commish did a great job getting everyone involved and coordinating. I was on the fence to start with due to the number of games involved. The irrational seeding system makes it let appealing to me than it originally was.

"The irrational seeding system makes it let appealing to me than it originally was." <---This. The seeding just makes no sense. Neither did the original comments. Considering those of us with #1 seeds are generally playing top 20 schedules and hurting ourselves to begin with, its laughable that the thought of playing a top 5 schedule which will only make things worse can be phrased as "ducking". Dac gets a ton of credit as this is a very cool idea. But not going to participate just for the sake of participating when the scheduling makes no sense.

Ok, I guess I understand the gist of the scheduling concerns, and this actually wasn't my preferred method for determining seeds, for some of the reasons mentioned.

I do wish that this debate had occurred before the vote to decide how seeding would be handled, but maybe folks didn't fully think about the implications then. I am certainly open to discussing changes to the seeding methods if that is what most coaches want to do.

I don't really like the idea of having 1 seeds play 3 or 4 seeds (if seeding is actually supposed to be related to the relative strength of the teams) since the lower seeds could reasonably expect to lose to all their higher seeded opponents. I recognize that the 2 season conference record average may not be a very good barometer of the relative strength of a team for the next season or even 2 seasons away, so I'm open to suggestions.

Regarding relegation, I hadn't thought of conference RPI, but that is a perfectly cromulent method to choose as well...

I will hold off scheduling, etc. ti later in the season next season. This will give us a chance to see how the 1st iteration really does affect NT chances, etc. Its possible that folks' concerns won't really be an issue, although there are clearly some seeding issues that could be addressed either way.

EVERYONE PLEASE LEAVE GAMES 1-5 FOR SEASON 65 OPEN TIL WE FIGURE THIS OUT!

Keep the feedback coming.

*The voting breakdown for seeding options was 13-11-8. Maybe we should have had another round of elections among just the top 2 finishers so that those 8 people that voted for option 3 (I was one) would get a vote on the others. I do think that having each conference have a commissioner that submits the rankings (seedings) and letting each conference decide for themselves what criteria to use to base that on makes a lot of sense, as long as there is someone in each participating conference willing to take on the role.

mmt and llama, would something like that make more sense for you all? I'd hate to see folks abandon the idea so quickly. This has been quite challenging to put together, but a lot of fun, and its great to see so many great coaches all involved in one big tourney...

I respect what you're doing here, dac, and I don't mean to be giving you **** about it.

I do think that having each conference have a commissioner that submits the rankings (seedings) and letting each conference decide for themselves what criteria to use to base that on makes a lot of sense, as long as there is someone in each participating conference willing to take on the role.

That works - though it might get difficult to wrangle everyone. Alternatively, you could let any participating coach (or, hell, even non-participating coach) rank the teams in any conference and post their rankings in this thread or another. I think that'd actually work out well.

I'm not worked up one way or the other about seeding, but I don't see the harm in having lower-seeded teams play higher-seeded ones. This happens in conference play as well, given the conferences we are all in. Actually, I might prefer to be guaranteed a certain mix: i.e., you play at least one 1 or 2 and at least one 3 or 4, etc...

The reason I'm not that worked up is that you do have 5 other non-conf. games you can schedule as you like.

If there's quite a bit of dissent on the point and no accomodation can be reached, we can always cut back the number of games slotted to the MUSDUC, too, making it 3-4 games instead of 5. It would help provide more non-conf games, which would help alleviate potential impact on NT seedings, etc...

Just some ideas floating in my head...

Still would like to see more feedback on scheduling and how others would like it to work.

Posted by dacj501 on 8/29/2013 1:11:00 PM (view original):Ok, I guess I understand the gist of the scheduling concerns, and this actually wasn't my preferred method for determining seeds, for some of the reasons mentioned.

I do wish that this debate had occurred before the vote to decide how seeding would be handled, but maybe folks didn't fully think about the implications then. I am certainly open to discussing changes to the seeding methods if that is what most coaches want to do.

I don't really like the idea of having 1 seeds play 3 or 4 seeds (if seeding is actually supposed to be related to the relative strength of the teams) since the lower seeds could reasonably expect to lose to all their higher seeded opponents. I recognize that the 2 season conference record average may not be a very good barometer of the relative strength of a team for the next season or even 2 seasons away, so I'm open to suggestions.

Regarding relegation, I hadn't thought of conference RPI, but that is a perfectly cromulent method to choose as well...

I will hold off scheduling, etc. ti later in the season next season. This will give us a chance to see how the 1st iteration really does affect NT chances, etc. Its possible that folks' concerns won't really be an issue, although there are clearly some seeding issues that could be addressed either way.

EVERYONE PLEASE LEAVE GAMES 1-5 FOR SEASON 65 OPEN TIL WE FIGURE THIS OUT!

Keep the feedback coming.

*The voting breakdown for seeding options was 13-11-8. Maybe we should have had another round of elections among just the top 2 finishers so that those 8 people that voted for option 3 (I was one) would get a vote on the others. I do think that having each conference have a commissioner that submits the rankings (seedings) and letting each conference decide for themselves what criteria to use to base that on makes a lot of sense, as long as there is someone in each participating conference willing to take on the role.

mmt and llama, would something like that make more sense for you all? I'd hate to see folks abandon the idea so quickly. This has been quite challenging to put together, but a lot of fun, and its great to see so many great coaches all involved in one big tourney...

dac the seeding isn't the problem at all, it's the scheduling. is it really fair to make 1 seeds play 3's and 4's? maybe not. is it fair to make 1 seeds play five straight 1's? mmt and llama are saying 'no'.

at the same time, because seeding is based on the past two seasons, it isn't a sure thing that all 1 seeds are good.

i don't personally have an issue with it, but if the survival of the musduc relies on a tweak, then we better well tweak!

I agree about the need to tweak if people have problems, but what, in concrete terms, would the teams not liking the system want ? Just seeds playing a mix of other seeds? That seems a pretty easy fix.

As for whether it is fair for a 1 to play a 3 or 4... It seems silly to say it isn't fair. If my team has a down year, I still have to play the top teams in my conference... Not sure why the musduc would be different. Furthermore, because a team seeded 3 or 4 could be better than the 1 because of the imperfect seeding process, it doesn't necessarily mean the 3 or 4 would be at a disadvantage. It could be the other way around. The imperfect seeding is why mixing up the seeds for scheduling makes perfect sense to me, especially if it makes everyone happy.